Emily Harris

Emily Harris

Kainaz AmariaNPR

International Correspondent Emily Harris is based in Jerusalem as part of NPR's Mideast team. Her post covers news related to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She began this role in March of 2013.

Over her career, Harris has served in multiple roles within public media. She first joined NPR in 2000, as a general assignment reporter. A prolific reporter often filing two stories a day, Harris covered major stories including 9/11 and its aftermath, including the impact on the airline industry; and the anthrax attacks. She also covered how policies set in Washington are implemented across the country.

In 2002, Harris worked as a Special Correspondent on NOW with Bill Moyer, focusing on investigative storytelling. In 2003 Harris became NPR's Berlin Correspondent, covering Central and Eastern Europe. In that role, she reported regularly from Iraq, leading her to be a key member of the NPR team awarded a 2005 Peabody Award for coverage of the region.

Harris left NPR in December 2007 to become a host for a live daily program, Think Out Loud, on Oregon Public Broadcasting. Under her leadership Harris's team received three back to back Gracie Awards for Outstanding Talk Show, and a share in OPB's 2009 Peabody Award for the series "Hard Times." Harris's other awards include the RIAS Berlin Commission's first-place radio award in 2007 and second-place in 2006. She was a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University in 2005-2006.

A seasoned reporter, she was asked to help train young journalist through NPR's "Next Generation" program. She also served as editorial director for Journalism Accelerator, a project to bring journalists together to share ideas and experiences; and was a writer-in-residence teaching radio writing to high school students.

One of the aspects of her work that most intrigues her is why people change their minds and what inspires them to do so.

Outside of work, Harris has drafted a screenplay about the Iraq war and for another project is collecting stories about the most difficult parts of parenting.

On Saturday evening, October 3, Odel Bennett and her husband Aharon walked through a main passageway in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City.

They had taken their two young children to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism for prayer. Then they were heading to Odel Bennett's parents' home in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim.

It wasn't not far, just a few blocks outside the Old City walls. But they didn't make it home that night. A Palestinian man attacked the couple with knives.

The recent wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence has focused on two weapons. Knives, used by Palestinians in most attacks against Israelis. And guns, which the Israeli security forces, and some civilians, have used to shoot attackers or suspected attackers.

Israelis say stopping knife attacks is hard because the weapon is so easy to get and to hide.

Israeli police are publishing pictures of knives they say were weapons in recent attacks. They're kitchen knives. Things you could buy at a supermarket.

Israeli security forces are struggling to contain a recent wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians that has erupted across Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, killing more than two dozen people in less than two weeks.

The government is deploying more security forces to areas of conflict, including Arab towns in Israel.

But shortly before this recent escalation began, city leaders in Jerusalem decided to try a new way to fight the separation and mistrust between Jews and Arabs, who constitute about 20 percent of all Israeli citizens.